The Doctor's House

by Ann Beattie

  I called Hound and told him his boss had just gotten together with Mac’s old girlfriend, no doubt to commemorate his death. “I didn’t know he had an old girlfriend,” Hound said. He was tired of telling me how grateful he was that I was putting up his friend. He said nothing. Finally, he asked how I was doing. Okay, I said. He asked how Nina was. Okay, I lied. He asked if I needed distraction; if I wanted to go to a movie. I said that I didn’t. I felt suddenly foolish about calling him. I dressed and went out and began to walk, thinking about Mac, thinking about what a weird, unpleasant woman Jan was. I walked a long distance, and finally found myself in the park where I’d once fed pigeons as I waited for the return of my best friend and the woman I almost married.

  There were few pigeons in the park. A bum was sleeping on one of the benches. He made me angry—he was repulsive: ugly, dirty. I moved quickly away. As I did, I was surprised to be crying. The possibility of crazy Jan’s calling Nina seemed more and more real. I hurried to Nina’s, convinced that the most important thing I could do would be to intercept the inevitable phone call another woman who disliked me was about to make to my sister. The walk took longerthan I thought. It was late, and Nina was asleep. I had to knock many times before I heard her moving. I stood there, shaking, as she asked sleepily, with a catch in her throat, who was at the door. When I said my name, she undid the chain and let me in, not even bothering to ask what I was doing there. I had already come by that morning, and that afternoon. She said nothing—just did a zombie walk back to bed, disheveled, having fallen asleep in her underwear. She pulled the covers over her without saying a word. I stood at the side of the bed, feeling the seepage of cold air from the narrow crack Nina always left at the bottom of the window, looking out to where, in the moonlight, I could see the limb of a tree swaying in the wind. I moved closer to the glass. There were a few stars in the sky, but on the ground, there was nothing worth noticing. In the distance, lights cast an eerie, pinkish glow. Everything my eye went to seemed profoundly empty. I realized that I was hoping for some movement: a squirrel; a bird. But they were all asleep. Suddenly exhausted, now more puzzled than angry about my encounter with Mac’s former girlfriend, I took off my shoes and lay on my back on the rug beside Nina’s bed. I was so tired that the only thing that kept me from sleep was that I was listening for the phone.

  Which did not ring all night.

  I never heard from Jan again. Gary said she had spoken bitterly to him about my convincing Mac that she should not remain one of his friends, which was nothing Mac and I had ever discussed. Gary warned me that she really had it in for me—that she had called me “God’s gift to women.” He had not gone back to her apartment with her. Instead, they had walked around and finally had a drink before parting.By then, it was clear to him that whatever they did would only have allowed her to act out some weird agenda between herself and Mac, or between herself and me. At the end of the week his wife had taken him back. I never heard from him again, either.

  No armchair explanation of all of that, Serena. Just something else that happened the week Mac died.

  The day I gave Serena the engagement ring, we went to my sister’s. Unlike Caitlin, Serena was pretty but not beautiful. I had never said a thing to her about wishing for another metamorphosis, because by the time we got together I’d given up on that kind of desire. By then I had learned that desires, too, could be done away with—they didn’t need to be dignified any more than ideas, or old jokes. I loved Serena. I suppose she was somewhat exotic, being English. And without setting her mind to it, as Caitlin had, she had a taste for kinky sex. Though she blames me totally for the pregnancies, you have to wonder about a person who used no birth control herself. In summer I would wear long-sleeved shirts to cover the spots where the ropes Serena laughingly bound me with chafed my wrists. I once explained the reddened wrists to Hound as we were driving along. We’d never talked about the abortion, let alone our sex lives. It was just that he’d said, “How’d you do that?”—so casual, so disinterested—that I’d decided what the hell, and answered honestly.

  The people around me have always been interested in my sex life—whether because they don’t have one, or because theirs is unsuccessful, or because they sense a slightlymasochistic streak in me, I don’t know. I suppose I was something of a masochist, since I never really took on my father, which was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. In my experience, if you don’t face down your aggressor immediately, others will take up where the first person left off. While I think that it’s a simplification to say that victims invite victimhood, I do believe that when someone is victimized it seems to make it open season for other people to have at them in the same way. Somehow the malice gets into the air. My father always thought of me as his rival. We don’t need Freud to explain what it meant that our father called our mother Mom—she told me, proudly, that he did, even when we children weren’t in the room. Years later, it occurs to me that he might have felt so bad about his behavior that it was easier for him to assume everyone, including his son, would act the same way. His idea of a bonding experience was to show me pornography. That he was so obsessed with my being a man, as he put it, only makes me think that he, himself, had serious problems.

  A psychological insight Serena would approve of. Perhaps a bit facile, though.

  When Alice Manzetti called, I was missing Serena. Though I didn’t really want to see her, I found myself inviting her to come to Boston. All the other times, I’d been willing to travel, but I couldn’t bring myself to fly to Syracuse. I didn’t even think about her visit until the last minute, and then I took her to a restaurant in the neighborhood I sometimes went to when I was tired and just wanted something quick toeat. Of all coincidences, she came on Serena’s birthday. I was wallowing in what it felt like to be a bastard. As for the restaurant, I didn’t much enjoy being there, myself.

  Inside, I ran into a colleague from work. Since nobody at work knew anything about my life, I imagine the sighting seemed significant to him. He was a new guy named Phil Ross, who’d come from a software company in Silicon Valley that had gone belly-up. He was with his girlfriend: a small woman with high cheekbones and good definition in her arms, wearing turquoise jewelry. Mac’s old girlfriend Jan had worn turquoise jewelry. Maybe that was why I disliked Ross’s girlfriend on first sight, even though she smiled at me.

  I barely knew the Alice I introduced; she’d taken a cab to the restaurant, and I’d met her outside, on the sidewalk, for no more than a quick hug and a few glib remarks about the difficulty of travel. As I introduced her, I imagined I saw her through the other woman’s eyes: a little heavy; out of shape beneath the blazer and skirt; the coat over her arm an unattractive muddy red. I thought of Serena’s camel hair coat—the one we’d draped over the covers in a chilly bed-and-breakfast in Maine, when she was telling me for the millionth time that she would eventually leave me, because she was certain I could never be loyal to any woman. I wondered if Alice liked her coat anywhere near as much as Serena and I had liked hers. Amid all the fighting and frustration, Serena’s coat had been such a comfort. I remembered stroking it as I absorbed Serena’s wrath. She had found out I’d had a one-night stand with a waitress. I wondered, in the restaurant with Alice, whether Serena still had the coat. Whether Serena might be wearing it in London, as I sat in a restaurant she and I had avoided.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said.

  “Itis,” she said. She still had that cheerleader’s way of punching last words. She put her folded coat next to her in the booth. There was a greasy, sharp smell in the air that made me wish we had gone to the Italian place next door, though it was always too crowded and noisy. Phil Ross and his girlfriend were probably avoiding the restaurant, themselves, so they could hear each other.

  “So you said on the phone that you were coming for the show at the MFA?” I said. Across the restaurant, Phil and the girlfriend were deep in conversation. They looked like California people: blond; bright-eyed; spines straight,
as if the overheated restaurant couldn’t wilt them. I couldn’t imagine what they were doing there.

  “Not really,” she said. “Really, I came to see you.”

  I tried to look pleasantly surprised. “I’m flattered,” I said. “Have you kept in touch with many people from high school?”

  “No,” she said. “A couple of the girls.”

  “And one of the guys,” I said, smiling. I wanted our meeting to be over. I wanted to be by myself. “What do you most remember about me?” I said.

  “How nice you were to your sister,” she said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. You were obviously soclose. My brother was in Catholic school, and I used to wish he could go to our school, and that he’d act the way you did. Like I was a real person, I mean. Even after all this time, we barely tolerate each other. How is Nina?”

  “She lives in Cambridge,” I said. “Actually, I wouldn’t saythat I’ve been much help to her in having a happier life. She was married to a really great guy, but he died in a car crash. A long time ago,” I added.

  “Oh, that’sawful,” she said. “But it must be an enormous help that you’re so close by.”

  “We don’t see that much of each other,” I said. Why did I lie? Probably because I didn’t want to have anything that resembled a heart-to-heart with Alice. It was a strange feeling, sitting across from someone I had no real memories of, knowing that person often thought of me.

  “What does Nina do?” she asked. “She was so creative when she was a kid.”

  “She edits books and fact-checks for magazines. She got some insurance money when her husband died, and it stopped her from focusing on a career. The freelance editing seemed like a blessing, at first. It came along at the right time, but she sort of got trapped there, and she’s never done anything else.”

  “Good for her,” Alice said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Good for her for doing what she wants. So many people in our generation seem to feel they have to do something extraordinary. Like whatever they do is never enough. It’s made for a bunch of unsatisfied overachievers, if you ask me.”

  Our waitress was not an overachiever. When she finally took our drink order, she was distracted by a noisy group of people coming into the restaurant and had to ask twice what we wanted. One of the women in the group wore a hat with a tassel, which reminded me of a hat Nina had worn when she was a child. As we got older, both of us refused to wear hats.Wearing boots was the most humiliating thing either of us could imagine. But since no one saw us off in the morning, we could leave behind whatever we didn’t want to wear. The woman settled herself into a booth. She had a bright smile, and for a second I thought I might know her, but when I saw her face in profile, I realized I was mistaken. I had the crazy urge to get to know her. To get up, go up to her, take her by the arm, and steer both of us out of the restaurant.

  “This is a nice place,” Alice said, sliding back in the booth. “Not all chichi.”

  It was not nice. It was smoke-filled and dreary. I resisted looking in the direction of the noisy group, who had by now settled into two booths near the front.

  “So tell me about yourself,” I said. “Obviously you’re in touch with Josie.”

  “We lost track of each other but got reconnected because of my mother. My mother looked her up a couple of years ago. She doesn’t have any friends of her own, so she started looking up mine. Isn’t that funny? Sad, I mean, but funny, too. She thinks high school was the most meaningful experience of my life, and that I was surrounded by wonderful friends. I hated every minute of it. I didn’t have any school feeling at all. You know, my mothermademe become a cheerleader.”

  I understood I should chime in and complain about high school. Instead, I said: “I guess you know I saw Josie recently, in Vermont.”

  Alice nodded. She said: “She gave me your number.”

  The waitress brought our drinks and set my scotch down in front of Alice and her ginger ale in front of me. Weswitched glasses. Alice was waiting for me to say something. I took a sip of my drink. I looked over my shoulder. The woman in the booth was not looking at me. Her long blond hair curled at her shoulders. The hat sat in front of her, on a place mat. “Josie looked good,” I said.

  “Oh, Josie takes care of herself,” she said. “I was going to aerobics class for a while, but I twisted my ankle. In the summer, it’s always easier to exercise.” She reached in her handbag. “Mind if I smoke?” she said.

  “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “You were always so . . . well, thingsdidn’tbother you, did they?” She struck a match and lit her cigarette. She waved out the match, dropping it in an ashtray. “If Nina lives in Cambridge, maybe she’d like to join us,” she said.

  The idea startled me. How would I begin to explain how reclusive my sister was? Suddenly—because Alice insisted on seeing our relationship as being so ideal—I felt I might be held responsible in some way for Nina’s behavior.

  “Not a good idea?” she said, picking up my hesitation.

  “She’d like to see you, I’m sure,” I said. “But she doesn’t go out much. I’ll give you her number. You can call. I’m sure she’ll ask you over.”

  “Is this, like, agoraphobia?”

  “No. No. She meets me and a friend of mine for dinner every now and then.”

  “So maybe she’d like to come out.”

  “No. I know she wouldn’t do it.”

  Alice took a puff of her cigarette. She said, “She’s still depressed because of her husband?”

  Depressed? Was that what my sister was? Reclusive andprivate was easier to think. She hadn’t been much different as a girl. Also, Nina did things I didn’t think a depressed person would do. She was the one who’d insisted on selling our parents’ house without involving a realtor when our mother went into the rest home, and she’d shown everyone through the house herself, taken care of everything until we brought in a lawyer for the closing. Nina went to specialty stores to find the best ingredients to cook with; she laughed at jokes; she baby-sat the neighbors’ boy and was always full of stories about the cute things Justin had done. But Alice’s question had confused me. Nina might be agoraphobic. She might be—I knew she was—depressed.

  “You never married?” she said.

  I hadn’t been expecting the question. I had been lost in thought: avoiding thinking about Nina, avoiding thinking about the woman in the booth.

  “I’ve been divorced for years,” I said.

  “You struck out, huh? I guess we didn’t invent that rite of passage, though sometimes it seems that way, doesn’t it?”

  This did not seem like a meeting with someone who carried the torch for me, as Josie had put it. It was more like Alice wanted to use the torch to repel me. “What about the reunion?” I said, changing the subject. “How was that?”

  “I went hoping to see you,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Really. I more or less came in saying that, right?” She tilted her head back and blew smoke at the ceiling. “I heard you called Nancy Dimmitt and her husband hung up on you,” she said. She snorted. “Is he like—was he the only one who put his foot down? I mean, from the wayNancy tells it, it seems like her husband has amazing radar, or something, if you call and say you and his wife were high school pals and he says, ‘That was a long time ago, and it’s going to stay a long time ago’ and hangs up.”

  “The way some jerk acted on the phone seems to have delighted you, Alice. Were you wishing I’d gotten your husband, so his paranoia could have kept you from being here?”

  “Listen,” she said, “for what it’s worth, I think you might not be as bad as you seem. But the way you act only makes other people feel bad. First I hear about how great Josie looks. Then you refuse to let me get together with your sister, like I’m not worthy of her company. Then you pretend you want me to tell you about a reunion you didn’t care enough about to go to, condescending to me be
cause I’m just some dull, unimportant person. Not pretty, like Josie. Not important, like your sister.”

  Across the restaurant, Phil Ross was helping his girlfriend into a black leather coat. I looked away, hoping they wouldn’t look in our direction.

  “I needed a cheap dinner and somebody to fuck,” she said. “Is that what you think?”

  She was a lot crazier than Nancy’s husband. A lot crazier. I was glad that the waitress hadn’t come to take our order. I considered seriously just getting up and walking away.

  “As a matter of fact, I am here,” she said quietly, “because my niece is a freshman at Northeastern, and as I told you on the phone, she and I are going to the MFA to have lunch to celebrate her birthday. I wanted to see you, but I didn’t make this trip exclusively for that purpose.” She rummaged in her purse. She withdrew a museum ticket, then slipped it backinto her bag. “But you’d never believe that, would you? You’re so conceited, of course you wouldn’t. You remember how girls used to be called cockteases if they flirted with boys when they didn’t have any intention of going all the way? I don’t know exactly what the male equivalent is, but it occurs to me that that’s what you’ve become: go to Brattleboro to look up somebody you know will be easy, because she’s upset about her dying relative. Then don’t think twice about asking for the phone number of the next vulnerable person, poor Patty Arthur.”